About two years ago, Filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks, came to Rahat, a Bedouin town down in Israel's Negev Dessert, to teach a group of Black Bedouin women a class in filmmaking. Rahat is by no means an ordinary place. It is afflicted with pessimism, unemployment, poverty and violence. It is partially populated by the Black Bedouins who were brought to the Negev, and the Middle East at large, as slaves. Kidnapped in Africa by Arab slave traders, they were auctioned-off in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Zanzibar. Until 50 years ago, the Black Bedouins were enslaved by the White ones. When the Director first started working with the group, he had no knowledge of it. The women never mentioned the issue he found increasingly intriguing. Only after about 18 months of working and making short films together, did he work up the nerve to suggest that they will make a film telling the history of the Black Bedouins. Suddenly, a small and modest course in filmmaking became a place in which a great taboo comes into the open. The women still suffering discrimination to this day unveil a story which few have spoken of.
About two years ago, Filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks, came to Rahat, a Bedouin town down in Israel's Negev Dessert, to teach a group of Black Bedouin women a class in filmmaking. Rahat is by no means an ordinary place. It is afflicted with pessimism, unemployment, poverty and violence. It is partially populated by the Black Bedouins who were brought to the Negev, and the Middle East at large, as slaves. Kidnapped in Africa by Arab slave traders, they were auctioned-off in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Zanzibar. Until 50 years ago, the Black Bedouins were enslaved by the White ones. When the Director first started working with the group, he had no knowledge of...
This fascinating film is about the terrible discrimination against blacks by the Bedouin of the Negev, which is unveiled in the framework of a modest class in filmmaking.
Documentary filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks is hired by the NGO, Step Forward, to teach film to a group of black Muslim women in Rahat. He teaches these women how to hold the camera (the woman in the picture is holding a sound boom), how to interview, and eventually, how to deal with sensitive issues. He learns that the black community lives separately, as a distinct minority and he tries to get the women to talk about it in the course. He also tries to get them to talk about their roots about which they know almost nothing. As a result of his prodding, the women interview one of the elders of their community and discover that their ancestors were bought as slaves by Arab Bedouin, that their roots are in Ethiopia and Sudan and that their ancestors were branded like cattle.
for the entire review by Amy Kronish, check:http://israelfilm.blogspot.com/
"On the other side of the African continent, at Stone Town on the island of Zanzibar off Tanzania, Israeli filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks led his filmmaking class – five “Black Bedouin” women from the town of Rahat in the Negev Desert – on a similar pilgrimage in 2005. In southern Israel’s Negev Desert, the Rahat Black Bedouins descend from Africans kidnapped by Arab slavers during the same period but taken east.
The mirroring that occurs within each film and between the two films is frequent. In a stroke of cinematic good fortune, Katrina Browne herself carries the same DeWolfe profile that echoes in every family portrait her film puts on-screen, making somberly visible the legacy she experiences so sharply. The DeWolfe family’s return to Ghana coincided with a massive gathering that aimed to ritually cleanse the area of its slaving past; during one moment when Browne watches a procession of hereditary tribal leaders, she wonders if her ancestors and theirs “did business.” That family business was the largest single slaving enterprise in US history, an elaborate “triangle trade route” involving almost 50 ships, their own bank and distilleries, the Ghanaian and Cuban sites, a Charleston slave auction house and connections in 40 other US cities.
On both African coasts, the holding dungeons that remain are bleak gray stone affairs, squat, dank, thick-walled and half-underground, made for holding hundreds of naked human beings in almost unbelievably tight, dark spaces. And in each place – despite the distance traveled, which has required considerable commitment and overcoming – the visitors must will themselves over the threshold."
For the entire review, look for Nancy Keefe Rhodes's review at criticalwomen.blogspot.com
Keeping it Reel
"With a wide range of gripping stories and insights, Israeli documentary films are thriving...The focus of Israeli documentary can vary widely..yet they have a common denominator: they unflinchingly examine the realities of Israeli society, whether in a political, religious or social realm. .. Uri Rosenwaks,who directed a movie about Black Bedouins and Yael Klopmann whose
film expands on the recent evacuation from Gaza represent a small piece of a rich and growing field.
"In THE FILM CLASS, it is the subjects of the documentary - Black Bedouin women - who are crossing boundaries. Directed by forty-something Rosenwaks, a veteran filmmaker, it relates the experiences of a group of Black Bedouin women in the Negev town of Rahat to whome he gave a course in filmmaking. In 2007, it won Best One Hour Documentary at the Annual Documentary Awards in Israel. More recently, it was given the special UNESCO mneniton at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.
Rosenwak's students do the filming...The truth they uncover - that their ancestors were brought to Palestine from East Africa as slaves by Arab traders during the 19th and 20th centuries and that their community has since endured severe discrimination at the hands of the white Bedouin population - is dramatic and unsettling. It seems that the prejudice had been taken for granted that the women are almost unaware of an alternate reality. Rosenwaks' story is really about education as empowerment."
Sara K. Eisen/Hadassah Magazine, March, 2008
If the film has a flaw, it's that the 53-minute running time doesn't really allow us to get to know the women in-depth (and we never see their reaction to the finished film). Nonetheless, this is a provocative celebration of empowerment through digital cinema, and is recommended for both Israeli and Islamic studies."
Video Librarian, January, 2008
"The Film Class” is a provocative celebration of empowerment through digital
cinema and is recommended for anyone interested in both Israeli and Islamic
studies." For the entire review by Phil Hall, check:
www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=10368
"A fascinating story"
London and Kirshenbaum, Channel 10
"An exciting movie"
Nahum Mohiach, Israeli
"The Film Class taught them how to film and much more than that… It taught them who they were"
Dvorit Sargal, Rating
"They went out searching, and came back with answers that stirred up their world"
Ma'ariv Weekend Issue
"The 11 wondrous women from Rahat will catch you at first sight"
Manuela Dviri, Vanity Fair
"The 11 wondrous women from Rahat will catch you at first sight"
Manuela Dviri, Vanity Fair